Murray urged advisors at the conference to “start thinking about expanding the scope of your discovery” with clients. “The whole issue is being proactive about it, just asking [clients] if they are ready for the inevitable.”
A passionate advocate for long-term investing in stocks, Murray couldn’t help but take a swipe at the recent reaction to market volatility.
“Last August, after not having one for almost four years, we had … a perfectly ordinary annual correction,” he said. Yet equity funds and ETFs saw net liquidations spike to “levels not seen since the great panic. … The media began screaming at us, this is it, this is the Big One. … The whole world panicked on a scale it hadn’t done since 2008 and 2009.”
When the market sold off again early this year, the same thing happened—an “existential panic” ensued, he said.
“What that says to me is that this great bull market that started in March 2009 is still younger than anybody thinks it is,” Murray said. “I’ve seen great tops. I saw one in 1968 that basically ended the post-World War II bull market, and I saw one in the year 2000 that basically started … in 1982. What were those tops made of? … This is what great tops are always made of—completely blissed-out euphoria and greed,” or what he compared to the “rapture of the deep” that afflicts scuba divers who lose any sense of danger from nitrogen narcosis.
Great bull markets end when the “knuckle-draggers” are buying all the dips without fear, Murray said. Market tops “are not made out of existential panic from speed bumps.”
Correction: The original version of this article misstated Nick Murray's claim about the number of people with Alzheimer's disease.